The headline is troubling: “With nowhere to hide from rising seas, Boston prepares for a wetter future.” But the map reveals something that mitigates some of the implied danger. The map that accompanies the article in ScienceNews by Mary Caperton Morton (August 6, 2019), shows the Boston shoreline ten years after the arrival of the Mayflower and the shoreline after the city more than tripled its land area by filling in its marshland and tidal flats. * Land at Logan and you land on what was once five islands. Visit Faneuil Hall and you stand where the Pilgrims could only wade at best. And the article cites a prediction for a rise in sea level that would submerse another meter and a half by the end of the century.
But alas! Isn’t the lesson one that we haven’t learned since the civilization at Ur and the pre-civilization encampments along the Black Sea? We love our seaside villages, but in building them, we risk inundation. Probably nowhere ever brought this thought home to me more than Chatham on Cape Cod. When a storm breached a narrow sandy barrier, it allowed waves to attack the “mainland” cliffs. People lost their homes as the sand beneath them washed away. But, standing on the new beach and looking at the cliff, I could see layers of sand mixed with thin layers of soil. Sea level had been both higher and lower. When it was lower, it was really lower, not just a meter or two, but a hundred meters and more. When it was higher, it was meters higher. Sea-level and near-sea-level homesites have been in jeopardy since people moved out of caves and started to build lean-tos. And this process of “filling in” low areas has a very ancient origin.
So, yes, Boston’s shoreline will probably undergo flooding, and that flooding might well be caused by a an influx of glacial meltwater flowing into thermally expanding seas. But in a so-called “modern age” with archaeological records of what coastal communities underwent in going underwater, isn’t there some finger-pointing to do? At? City planners, town fathers (or, to be politically correct, “town parents”). Logan Airport wasn’t built before the ancient cities were inundated. People had access to the histories of shorelines. Coastal geomorphologists work for both Massachusetts and the Federal Government. Private universities have their share of them, also. Surely, someone might have said, “You know, if you build in a marshland, you could find your airport as much below water as you hope to maintain it above water.”
Hubris is the first of sins as I have said elsewhere. We can declare ourselves godlike, but we are, in truth, still fallibly short-sighted. Not far from Boston one can see in the cliffs of Cape Cod the tale of changing sea level. Did no one ever look?
If warming continues, sea level will probably rise—though not necessarily as the direst predictions indicate. Problems will occur; new expensive remedies will be incurred.
Of course, one could argue that the nature of a burgeoning population and the pressure on city parents to accommodate more people and business, as well as to rid itself of unwanted fill material, demanded solutions in the moment of needs. Yet, those lessons of building on the shore and in the marsh seem somehow never have made themselves into the brains of a group of people who have a tradition of intellectualism and science, of history and research. And what of those civil engineers who reclaimed the marshland? Did they sleep through their courses in hydrology and coastal geomorphology?
Someone explain to me how a modern civilization repeats the mistakes of ancient civilizations and Stone Age peoples. As for me, I rest comfortably at more than 300 meters above sea level, knowing that during the night I won’t be awakened by a sudden surge of rising tides.
*Mary Caperton Morton’s good summary of the problem Boston faces can be found at https://novelso.com/joinnow/step1.php?lp_tweak=general&a_aid=tvnce&data1=&data2=warmer&data3=https%3A%2F%2Fsciencenews.org%2F&data4=%24%7BSUBID%7D&data5=16703
ScienceNews Magazine, Vol. 196 No. 3, August 17, p. 16.
But alas! Isn’t the lesson one that we haven’t learned since the civilization at Ur and the pre-civilization encampments along the Black Sea? We love our seaside villages, but in building them, we risk inundation. Probably nowhere ever brought this thought home to me more than Chatham on Cape Cod. When a storm breached a narrow sandy barrier, it allowed waves to attack the “mainland” cliffs. People lost their homes as the sand beneath them washed away. But, standing on the new beach and looking at the cliff, I could see layers of sand mixed with thin layers of soil. Sea level had been both higher and lower. When it was lower, it was really lower, not just a meter or two, but a hundred meters and more. When it was higher, it was meters higher. Sea-level and near-sea-level homesites have been in jeopardy since people moved out of caves and started to build lean-tos. And this process of “filling in” low areas has a very ancient origin.
So, yes, Boston’s shoreline will probably undergo flooding, and that flooding might well be caused by a an influx of glacial meltwater flowing into thermally expanding seas. But in a so-called “modern age” with archaeological records of what coastal communities underwent in going underwater, isn’t there some finger-pointing to do? At? City planners, town fathers (or, to be politically correct, “town parents”). Logan Airport wasn’t built before the ancient cities were inundated. People had access to the histories of shorelines. Coastal geomorphologists work for both Massachusetts and the Federal Government. Private universities have their share of them, also. Surely, someone might have said, “You know, if you build in a marshland, you could find your airport as much below water as you hope to maintain it above water.”
Hubris is the first of sins as I have said elsewhere. We can declare ourselves godlike, but we are, in truth, still fallibly short-sighted. Not far from Boston one can see in the cliffs of Cape Cod the tale of changing sea level. Did no one ever look?
If warming continues, sea level will probably rise—though not necessarily as the direst predictions indicate. Problems will occur; new expensive remedies will be incurred.
Of course, one could argue that the nature of a burgeoning population and the pressure on city parents to accommodate more people and business, as well as to rid itself of unwanted fill material, demanded solutions in the moment of needs. Yet, those lessons of building on the shore and in the marsh seem somehow never have made themselves into the brains of a group of people who have a tradition of intellectualism and science, of history and research. And what of those civil engineers who reclaimed the marshland? Did they sleep through their courses in hydrology and coastal geomorphology?
Someone explain to me how a modern civilization repeats the mistakes of ancient civilizations and Stone Age peoples. As for me, I rest comfortably at more than 300 meters above sea level, knowing that during the night I won’t be awakened by a sudden surge of rising tides.
*Mary Caperton Morton’s good summary of the problem Boston faces can be found at https://novelso.com/joinnow/step1.php?lp_tweak=general&a_aid=tvnce&data1=&data2=warmer&data3=https%3A%2F%2Fsciencenews.org%2F&data4=%24%7BSUBID%7D&data5=16703
ScienceNews Magazine, Vol. 196 No. 3, August 17, p. 16.
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